Albanian Gangs Have Set Up Their Own CCTV Networks to Spy on Cops

A bombing campaign targeting police officials in a northern Albanian city led to the discovery of hundreds of illegally mounted CCTV cameras, which the government claims are operated by local mafia clans.

Police discovered a network of cameras set up and being used by gangs suspected of being involved in a high-profile bomb attack on the home of a regional police chief.

Explosives were detonated outside the residence of Pellumb Shpati, chief of police in the northwestern city of Shkodra, in the early hours of the morning of the 13th of January. A special investigative group was set up to find who orchestrated the attack although no arrests have yet been made. 

Police found 59 CCTV cameras in Shkodra alone. This prompted authorities throughout the country to seize more than 500 cameras. Most were linked to mobile phones and found in Tirana, the Albanian capital, according to the national police. 

The cameras were operated remotely to monitor the movements of police, gang operatives and rival gangs as well as police operations. 

“The police dismantled…cameras placed on electric poles, in the street, to gather information for criminal purposes,” Albanian police said in a statement on Tuesday via the Financial Times. “The cameras installed by persons or criminal groups were also intended to obtain information about the movements of the police.”

Setting up CCTV street surveillance is a tactic that has been used by Albania’s significant organised crime community to monitor law enforcement and secure areas of their control for several years.

“Organised crime in Albania has reached high levels of sophistication and camouflage,” Rudina Hajdari, chair of Albania’s EU Integration Committee and a former MP, told VICE World News. “What was made public with the camera system [used by gangsters] has existed for a long time, but the police turned a blind eye [to it] because most criminal groups have close ties with the government… [via] money laundering through building or different forms of investment,” said Hajdari. 

The case further exposes the grip that organised crime groups have on the small country. 

Hajdari said the relationship between government officials and organised crime groups threatens the Balkan country’s developing democratic political system because of increasing threats and intimidation made against critics.

“The cameras are only one aspect, but the control that organised crime has over the political process today is threatening our fragile democracy,” said Hajdari. “The criminal organisations help…in the electoral processes finance political campaigns,” she said, as well as threatening opposition figures on the behalf of corrupt officials and their mafia patrons. 

Albanian mafias control much of Europe’s cannabis and heroin trade, according to EU reports, as well as playing a significant role in smuggling cocaine from South America to Europe and in selling it in the UK. Usually organised around clans and family groups, they connect the country with a large Albanian diaspora throughout western Europe, a situation considered a possible impediment to the country’s long standing aspirations to join the EU.

Following the seizure of CCTV cameras, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said: “The fact that the police acted on this issue, that has been a problem for decades, means that the government is keen and focused on fighting organised crime.”